The latest Edge Canary version started disabling Manifest V2-based extensions with the following message: “This extension is no longer supported. Microsoft Edge recommends that you remove it.” Although the browser turns off old extensions without asking, you can still make them work by clicking “Manage extension” and toggling it back (you will have to acknowledge another prompt).
At this point, it is not entirely clear what is going on. Google started phasing out Manifest V2 extensions in June 2024, and it has a clear roadmap for the process. Microsoft’s documentation, however, still says “TBD,” so the exact dates are not known yet. This leads to some speculating about the situation being one of “unexpected changes” coming from Chromium. Either way, sooner or later, Microsoft will ditch MV2-based extensions, so get ready as we wait for Microsoft to shine some light on its plans.
Another thing worth noting is that the change does not appear to be affecting Edge’s stable release or Beta/Dev Channels. For now, only Canary versions disable uBlock Origin and other MV2 extensions, leaving users a way to toggle them back on. Also, the uBlock Origin is still available in the Edge Add-ons store
Firefox time
I use Firefox for most things, but Google Meet maxes out all my CPUs if I use Firefox. Any kind of screen sharing kills it. Suggestions on how I can get video encoding working greatly appreciated… Intel Xe graphics.
Well, Firefox tries really hard to go to shit as well with their new Privacy Policy and their first ever Terms of Service.
Genuine question - isn’t their terms basically “if you use these third party services you’re subject to their terms, and also were going to collect some data to see if people actually use this feature or if it’s a waste of time?”
LLM usage is a part of it, but it’s not the only thing. They are moving more and more in a direction that they use your usage data for marketing I feel.
For example search suggestions, where they started tracking in which location you are searching for what and tell that third party advertisers, so that they can show you ads depending on your information. Additionally they also state very clear that they will handle personal information and location data and give that to third parties if you use advanced search.
Another example is the “new tab” in which they show ads and sponsored content and track how you interact with that for showing you better ads.
There are a lot of other features which will track behavior or usage, but you have to actively use them.
Then there is the debate about the “you grant us non exclusive, worldwide” rights to use your uploaded and typed in data discussion. Yes, they need to have rights to handle my data I input, but together with the ads stuff this smells fishy. Maybe more so because this is the first ever Terms of Use and all of that has been working without that in the past.
In the meantime they set usage reports and studies active per default. You can disable it, but you have to know about that option.
All of that is far from other browsers like Chrome and Edge but they seem to slowly change in a more ads-driven way. Firefox was basically surviving on google money the last decade, and that may stop, so we have to be extra careful.
Yup. But FUD must be pumped out.
For anybody unaware, their new privacy notice essentially states that if you opt in to using a third party LLM within Firefox, the LLM provider will get the info that you give to the LLM.
Thanks for the eli5
firefox is starting to enshittify, LIBREWOLF, or another might be better.
It’s slowly turning, too. Start looking for something else.
We need a truly FOSS browser that developed and maintained by the community. Librewolf isn’t it unless it fully forks away from Mozilla. We need a new engine and we just don’t have one yet.
Ladybird Browser is coming, but could be a couple years still
From scratch, BSD licensed, non-profit managed
BSD licensed
Ew. It ought to be AGPLv3.
(I almost just said “copyleft,” but as Chromium proves, even LGPL is insufficient protection from corporate usurpation.)
Truly; it’s shocking how much people are still clinging to permissive licensing in the middle of everything going on.
Huh? The goal of the chromium project was to facilitate a corporate browser in the first place. It’s why they don’t have a more permissive license. They want to be able to use everyone else’s work if anyone forks it.
Permissive license doesn’t mean that corporations suddenly get the ability to completely change existing work for the worse, or change its’ license. They can bloody well do that with GPL too if they own the project including contributions, so it doesn’t matter if it’s BSD or GPL, the only protection that the open source users have, in any case, is that licenses can’t be changed retroactively, so if Firefox, Chromium or Ladybird went completely closed source and proprietary today, we’d still have the right to use the code as it was yesterday. Permissive licenses just mean that someone somewhere can create a closed source build without the permission of the person or company who owns the project and that doesn’t particularly matter for anyone using Ladybird or any future open source derivatives. Permissive licenses are useful for libraries, but also for software that could be bundled as part of a bigger solution. Maybe you want to embed a web browser in your proprietary application and don’t want to use webview because its’ usability differs platform to platform.
Also why AGPLv3 and not GPLv3? I don’t think the “A” part is even necessary here, that’s needed more for server side applications, I.e if the end user is using online without the code running on their own computer, AGPL is the one to use.
Anyway, in the modern age, (A)GPL is used by a shit ton of corporate software. Oftentimes with an (A)GPL open core and a bunch of proprietary functionality not included in the core. I should know, I work with one example on a near daily basis. This way, nobody can just take their core functionality and develop a closed source alternative, while they can sell you an enterprise license for full functionality on their “open source” software.
The reason why Chromium uses LGPL is because they forked the code from Safari, which had previously forked the code from KHTML (KDE’s web rendering component, used in Konqueror). The LGPL was provably insufficient to prevent corporate usurpation of the project, as a historical fact.
As for the “A” part of AGPL not being relevant for locally-run software, (1) it doesn’t hurt either, and (2) having maximal protections could prevent weird corporate shenanigans that we haven’t thought of yet.
Backed by Shopify, huh? Bet they wish that wasn’t the case, given recent events.
Sounds like a job for JoMiran! Rooting for you!
I agree. I’d even be willing to regularly donate to a foundation that would have this aim as their goal and have their acts matching their promises.
Although, not necessarily a new engine. Going from scratch is a good way to remake a lot of mistakes, while reusing old code is a good way to keep old debt. That’s not a decision I would like to have to take.
It’s almost like this not-for-profit, for-profit subsidiary thing is a cancer (or at least, my selection bias of late thinks so).
Can someone ELI5 why a foundation can’t develop these products directly, with a for-profit subsidiary? Is there something forbidden about rasing revenue for a not-for-profit via product sales? Would this even fix anything?
Sam Reichfox
The only way to learn, is by playing
Not for much more, it seems.
Who fucking uses edge?
On the rare occasion I want to stream movies while on my PC at 1080p, because most online movie services will only stream 1080p to Edge. Some times Chrome will be allowed to stream 1080p but it’s pretty hit or miss in my experience. On another note, basically no streaming services will stream movies to you in 4k on a PC, I’ve also found most streaming apps on my phone won’t give me 4k either, you can only really get 4k streaming to a smart TV… it’s pretty ridiculous.
Why let the streaming services tell you what you can or can’t watch videos on when you can just pirate everything?
Weirdly enough, I like buying movies to encourage people to keep making the kinds of movies I enjoy watching. I have some physical media, but often times you can’t find 4k versions of movies on physical media.
Also, I tend to buy digital and don’t watch subscription services much.
you can buy a normal physical version then pirate the 4K file
If you rely so much on buying digital, be ready for a surprise later on down the line.
Edge wasn’t that bad honestly, I prefer it over chrome and use it when I need to test a site on that engine.
Ive been firefox for a long while now
Firefox has been my daily driver for a decade but that doesn’t really change anything that I said.
x2
Noobs who like to live on the edge
My workplace configures edge and chrome by default, were very office365 integrated and support chrome for some dates specific thing.
Now i am privileged with local admin powers so i have firefox. Still the integrations with edge run deep so i still have to use it lots of times. There are plans for copilot which is one of the dummest llm bots (opinion) but is again catered to edge.
I will however never use chrome (anymore). Google was the second tech giant i dropped after facebook. They cannot redeem themselves for destroying the web (opinion). I rarely use search engines anymore but i rather use bing and bing sucks. (duckduck is also based on bing)
Sorry for the rant, but that was relieving. Arch btw.
I do when shitty devs don’t test in firefox and things are broken.
My company has blocked all other web browsers, so lots of us sadly.
probably wanted to monitor your every move, because the others one might shield your identity.
Corps. All of the bells and whistles it has ties into the corps tenant which includes isolation of things like sync’d profiles, seamless sso, favorites, extensions, etc
Since it’s all under the tenant, all of that data is subject to the same privacy and policies the corp and MS agreed to, which makes it easy to work with other companies that have their own client policy requirements.
MS also makes it easy to control and harden all of their products including Edge using policy controls from a single UI.
You can’t do any of this with Firefox without extra effort.
I like it’s pdf viewer interface. It’s less cluttered than Adobe, and it’s markup is a little better than Firefox.
Did they fix the issue of their license partially closed? Or is it still the same
Yes, actually, they made the source available again.
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Just discovered them yesterday and made the switch!
How painless is it to carry over everything from Firefox?
Was super easy but my setup is pretty minimal.
Export bookmarks from Firefox, install favourite addons in the Floorp extension menu and lastly import bookmarks.
Most of the settings will be familiar and some features will be new like the workspaces and sidebar.
Hope your transfer goes smoothly!
I’ve looked it up and apparently there’s a problem where if you open a new window with any amount of tabs and close it last, you will lose all your tabs on the first window. It’s a big no for me, because I already had to restore last opened windows in Firefox many times, and I am pretty sure you previously could just press
CTRL+SHIFT+Tand it did reopen them, although I might misremember things.
'nough said!
Amarok? That was my favorite media player way back when
Amarok is the other wolf. I know it looks deceptively similar.
itsthesamepicture.bmp
Does not elicit the image of iron.
Oh, it’s libre.
What’s Edge?
The browser you use to download Firefox
The browser you use to download Firefox
Huh? Just type
winget install Mozilla.Firefoxinto PowerShell / cmd.
The thing you use once to download firefox, and then never again.
You don’t Edge?
Mine Linux don’t have it
Let me help you:
flatpak install flathub com.microsoft.Edge
Why would you do this to him
They get you really close but stop just before finishing.
a chromium skin
Ok maybe off topic, why does a web browser have to be one of the most complicated software artifacts on earth? So expensive to write and maintain that only a few orgs with huge developer resources can do it?
What would it look like to start from scratch with a massively simplified standard for specifying UIs, based on all we’ve learned since html/css was invented? A standard that a few developers could implement in a few weeks using off the shelf libraries. Rather than reimplement every bizarre historical detail in html/css, have a new UI layout system that’s simple and consistent, and perhaps more powerful.
What would it look like to start from scratch with a massively simplified standard for specifying UIs, based on all we’ve learned since html/css was invented?
Probably a lot better. The difficult, and expensive, part is getting everyone to migrate over to this new standard, not because it’d be unfeasible but because companies don’t want to spend any time or money on things that they don’t think will make them profit.
What we’d need is, for example, the EU realizing that Google’s attempted monopoly on the internet is dangerous and requiring a certain standard for private consumer-facing websites to get the ball rolling.
I feel like this sort of thing should be more modular. Maybe on Linux we could in theory have multiple packages that could have different implementations and the browser UI would just use the underlying packages with their specific extras on top.
That would also align well with the Unix philosophy of each component “doing one thing well” and composing small tools to achieve complex tasks.
Splitting things add a different level of complexity (public APIs, deprecations, different versions, etc.) but it would make the web much more free, since we could have different individuals maintaining different packages and no organization would have too much control over the web.
I believe this is possible because we have very complex stuff such as entire Desktop Environments on Linux that are made up of multiple packages and each package just do a well defined thing and build on top of each other to create a “whole” experience in the end.
Just in case you needed another reason not to use Edge.
Chrome* or Chromium based browsers*
Fancy firefox-based browser along the lines of Arc?
Worth a look if you’re a web power-user / developer sort of person
Zen’s glance feature allows you to view links without actually opening them.
I do not like the wording of this because you are opening it
I was concerned, but it’s not Wiki style.
It’s just a fancy skin for modal windows. It pops open over 70% of the screen front and center.
Personally. I find tabs more useful, but haven’t fully switched over from Firefox yet so I haven’t looked into disabling it.
Yeah, viewing a link without opening it is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
You just viewed a link without opening it.
Nonsense, you’re not opening them! You’re fetching them for viewing. It’s totally different!
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It’s desktop-only right now and feels like for the foreseeable future. Firefox sync works between Zen and Firefox so you can just run Firefox or one of the Android-specific versions of Firefox that support the generic/vanilla firefox sync.
I was thinking of maybe trying it for a few specific websites that I keep persistently on since I think it may work well for that. However, I was a bit concerned that logins and stuff won’t sync which might make it annoying. Having this sync seems pretty cool though, might try it out.
Why is there a sidebar for tabs? That seems wasteful for all the screen space it takes.
Edit: From what I see it tries to do everything that is a job of a window manager/desktop environment. There are various solutions to have workspaces, etc. that you can use globally, so I don’t understand why would anyone use this, unless you are on locked system like Windows or Mac.
Microsoft Edge is literally Google Chrome button replaced with Microsoft Features/Spyware
Right, you don’t need extensions, because you don’t need customization, because what you need is what we the corp say you need.
I think Web as it exists is a failed branch of evolution.
A networked (solved) hypertext (solved) document (solved) system - yes. A networked hypertext system with one or two unbelievably complex clients, where only enormous corps have enough resources to change something, - no. One can add steps - E2E encryption, dynamic services, scripts, all not requiring a monolithic piece of nonsense.
BTW, those hating Flash, I hope, do realize that its proper, paradigm-abiding replacement would be a FOSS plugin with similar goal, not what we have.
I feel similarly. Javascript was made to add some functionality to documents and now we’re basically running Doom in a word professor. I don’t know what a better system would look like, but I’d draw a line between document-type pages and pages that you want to do more on.
people use edge? it downloads itself onto your computer without permission.
It integrates very well with your M365 you need at work, and it saves a ton of time when people can use SSO to basically get everything up and running immediately on a new laptop. Including bookmarks and passwords.
By default I install unblock on any user machine I touch because it’s equal parts user experience and security.
It didn’t for me on Linux :^)
Honestly, it’s pretty easy to dunk on edge. But it’s based on the same chromium browser. They have excellent customer support. I have in the past submitted bug reports and they have followed up. Until now, they had pretty good privacy and options in their settings. With this v2 / v3 situation, I will have to reassess all that.
I use it on my laptop because it doesn’t nuke my laptop’s battery like all other browsers. So it’s a bit of a shame.
Librewolf on desktop Mull on Android
Regular Android Firefox has Ublock origins as well.
DivestOS has ceased maintaining Mull if I remember correctly. I use Ironfox on Android now.
I don’t suggest Librewolf for the plebians though.
It comes with very aggressive anti-fingerprinting and privacy features.
For people in !technology@lemmy.world that’s less of a problem but I wouldn’t suggest it to my family members.
Nooo, it is browser on my workplace! How should I work efficiently without uBlock!?!?
Tell IT and your boss how your productivity tanked since edge disabled uBlock.
Click on all the ads and install all the malware. That will teach them.
🤭yea, and what are we gonna do against it?
We manage everything with azure group policies (therefore use all microsoft). we don’t want an extra system to manage the browser of the employees. Maybe corporations are save from that just a while longer than private user 🤔
This might actually reverse firefox’s decline in userbase at least in the business world. Any shop that already has multi-OS management could probably insta-switch to firefox, and i’m sure that MS locked-in places could too given enough of a push by IT.
Less browsing of news articles?
I work in research and development, I have to constantly search the web for stuff
My work insists on using it too. Fuck knows why, maybe it’s a security thing? And my personal laptop is constantly nagging me to use edge - it could be the best browser ever and I would still avoid it just because of the pushiness.
It’s a good Chromium based Windows native browser that has integration with your Entra ID account so all your bookmarks / history is automatically synced and users have seamless experience when switching devices. No longer seeing tickets like ″My bookmarks are gone after I reinstalled my PC″ is enough to consider Edge as your company main browser. And the fact that it is part of OS, you do not need to worry about install and patching.
I prefer Firefox, but from Chromium browsers Edge is really good, you cannot expect companies to suggest something like Vivaldi.
This is for companies being in M365 ecosystem. If you are in Google then I suppose Chrome would make more sense.
Yeah, that’s fair, I thought it would probably be something like that. TBF it’s work, they’re paying me, I’ll use whatever they choose. I won’t have it on my own computer though just because of Microsoft’s hard sell
Exactly that
The new manifest v3 version is actually not that bad, though not nearly as good as normal ublock.
❤️
Microsoft is a spineless removed.
It’s the biggest one still federated with .world with that filter.
